Under the shadow of his attacker, Yeung-Sung bent over pleading, hands feebly blocking his head. “Don’t kill me. Take anything you want.”

Silence. After the initial shock cooled down, Yeung-Sung peeked up between trembling fingers. It was too dark to make out, but he soon heard a laugh. Low, pained and familiar. Who was this? A black shoe smeared itself across his cheek in response. The kick sent him face first onto the sidewalk. Yeung-Sung flailed his limbs in an effort to stand but could not overcome the dead-weight of his head. He wondered how long he would he stay conscious for. How am I not unconscious already?

The ambusher was striking his shoe against the curb repeatedly. “These are new,” he said, as if he stepped in dogshit. He shook them around and stomped a few times on cement. “Fuck.”

Meanwhile, Yeung-Sung tried to move again. He lifted with his arms and his chest. In this position, it felt impossible. Then, he heard the crunch of gravel and his arms were knocked down and pinned back, stretched almost out of their sockets. Yeung-Sung was about to let out a howl but his head was dunked into the ground and his voice drowned in gravel, cheeks crushed against a thousand jagged pinpricks.

“Shh,” came that voice again. The assailants voice; calm, uncaring, yet familiar. I feel like I know who you are. He rubbed Yeung-Sung into the ground while making tender noises. He hummed a little bit as Yeung-Sung was shredded by friction in his shoulders; between his ribs; the sides of his hips; below his knees. Even when familiar figure let him go, he lay still, pain binding him like rope. Still, he listened. Through pain and horror and adrenaline, he listened. One step. Two. The assailant took his time. Three. It was break enough for Yeung-Sung to roll his head, gravel stuck to his cheek, and lay eyes on the impending threat.

It was Jordan. The conductor of this utopian experiment; Jordan, stood over him in a white shirt with his suit jacket folded over one arm.

“This isn’t about what you can give me,” he said, “But what you can take away.”

He swung down onto his haunches and Yeung-Sung saw the misaligned grin he was wearing, baring his teeth, making him a vengeful demon. He leaned in close, and with that came the smell of vodka. “I’ve lost everything already, Yeung-Sung.” He said the name in two snaps of his mouth. “Everything.”

“Everything!” he growled, jumping up suddenly to begin stomping on Yeung-Sung’s wrists, clasping him deeper into the ground like hellish handcuffs. Yeung-Sung exploded in a gasp, his torso writhing up, a scream biting through his lips. Jordan stepped off. So he exhaled. An act that still caused him pain, as his lungs inflated into the cement, pressing his hips down with it. While his head lolled in the air, the nape of his neck was seized.

“Everything except this place,” Jordan whispered, and began to drag Yeung-Sung away.

He felt stretched, like his neck was just barely attached to his shoulders. Mostly senseless, Yeung-Sung was greeted with a shower of cold dew; Jordan had shoved him into the field. With both hands on his neck, Jordan brushed the grass aside with quickening steps, heading towards the colony apartment. Though it was smoother than concrete, he still felt like a human bi-plane crashing through a canopy, spluttering and shuddering, wishing he had just a little more fuel, a little more in his engine to escape his fate. But he was helpless. He could only brace himself through the barrage of bumps along the way, astonished at Jordan’s strength. Yet the wet earth helped to ease him through.

The pain from the initial blow to the head was Yeung-Sung’s anchor from where he measured each subsequent injury. Beyond every other pain and the ever-present pressure on his neck, he almost adapted to it. Hearing the constant rustling of Jordan’s feet in the grass, like a blow-dryer sweeping a head of hair to the side, became somehow relaxing. He was lost in the moment to moment world of his senses, unable to visualise an escape, nor a happy ending. This was his world. Then, the rustling stopped and Yeung-Sung immediately winced.

Jordan tightened his fingers. His nails curled in, pulling his skin aside as if it were a stretchy dough. The owner of the colony roared. -In rage, no, grief, Yeung-Sung thought in mid-air after he was launched out of the field.

Out in front of the apartments, under their warm light, the ground received Yeung-Sung fondly. Again his system was crumbled from within and he sucked in deep breaths while he could, whimpering down on his back. Every instinct of his fought the desire to breathe and instead willed him to tense up, curl up each limb into a tightly wrapped ball -despite the bruises, exposed flesh and flayed skin pulsating in protest- and die.

How did we go from unpacking boxes to this?

Out of the tiny part of his vision that he held on to, Yeung-Sung watched Jordan step cautiously from the grass, in glistening shoes and begin rolling up his sleeves. He looked in disgust at the wet stains he had accumulated as he did so. “So, you’re not going to fuck this up for me. For everyone’s sake.”

Jordan twisted his left foot, rocking Yeung-Sung’s head against the ground, making a hollow clack-clack-clack. From the ends of a laugh, he said, “But mostly, for your own sake.”

Still bracing himself, holding on to fend off just one last strike, Yeung-Sung lay tense on the ground and waited. He listened, and as best as he could make out Jordan was somewhere above him, taking deep, sagging breaths and…sobbing? Perhaps the night had simply gone too cold, as evidenced by Jordan’s sniffling, and the slurp of wiping a nose.

“Ahh!” said Jordan, “What am I doing? What am I doing?” And with that, he left, muttering the phrase over and over again, droning, intoning it in that bellowing voice of his. With that, the planner of the system intended to “save the world” left Yeung-Sung outside the glass walls of the apartment’s lobby, little more than breathing mincemeat.

What now?

With the use of roughly one and a half limbs, he managed to scamper up the side of the wall, face pressed against the glass. Snapped branches grow back, but I am not a tree. A crippled bird cannot go off on its own accord. He hoped that he wasn’t beyond repair. But he wouldn’t put it past Jordan -after tonight- to have beaten him just enough to be still able to function, enough to work and participate in his colony after a few days. And if he didn’t, if he refused again, then he could hardly come up with what else his glorious leader would do to him.

Haphazardly, he reflected on what he could’ve done differently tonight. If I didn’t go along with Wil, if I didn’t let myself be dragged into the affairs of that pub, then I could have eluded Jordan. He clenched his fist, only for his tendons to refuse him with a shock. His arms fell flat at his sides. Damnit.

But is it right to blame them, how could they know? After all, aren’t they -sort of- my friends now? They don’t seem particularly happy about being here either. They stay in their pub, on the periphery of any actual conflict, and gossip about he outside, right? Aside from Anita, perhaps. No, they invited me, made me feel finally welcome. Then…is it my own fault for doubting the system, for spitting in Jordan’s plan?

No. What am I thinking?

He’s a madman! Why am I giving him the benefit of the doubt -why am I dealing him out the victim card? There’s no time! If he’s done this to me, who knows what else he has done, what else he is capable of?

Yeung-Sung pushed of the glass wall with his fingers. He managed it and strangely, in place of the expected burst of pain, he felt nothing. In fact, the entire well of pain he had been bottling up seemed as if it was further away, hurting some distant version of himself, but not affecting him in this moment. It was contained. It was manageable! I need to get inside.

“Up we go,” Yeung-Seung said and half-crawled, half-dragged himself towards the screen doors. They opened with a whoosh and he fell inside with a koof! With the help of the tiled floor, his cheek smothered his mouth as he shouted out. “Help!”

Someone’s got to be here. Where is the security from last time? Maybe my friends will come…What would Wilhelm say? “Duh! If this was all a game, you’d just drink a potion and heal up to full”. That sounds about right. Then he’d give a thumbs up. God, he’s an idiot.

He lay flat out on the lobby like a worm out in the rain, arms tucked in at his sides... He reached for his pocket. He had an idea.

“Oh shit!” came a voice.

I like living things -I hate fake things, so I’m going to destroy them. With the very things that they seek to replace; Life; Nature. Fuck you, Jordan. I’ll see to it that this colony will destroy itself before these 90 days are up.

“I’m coming. Stay here, don’t move, I’m getting help! Holy fu- “

Yeung-Sung felt himself fading into rest. No. Not yet. Just before he lapsed into sleep, he opened Airgead and tapped out two words. POTION. POISON.

[Ingredients required]

[Let’s begin]